Snapchat as a Marketing Tool

Snapchat is a social media mobile app that allows you to send videos or images that disappear after being seen by the receptor. There are approximately 26 million users in the U.S., and around 400 million snaps are sent daily.

The videos and images that you can send on the app are not the same as the ones you would see on Facebook or YouTube – videos on Snapchat have a short time limit and disappear after being seen. Now let’s think about how we can use this to reach out to our audience:

You need to understand the app. It doesn’t matter if you’re dealing with high executives, this app is used in a very casual way. If you use it in a non-formal way, adding some filters from the app and with a sense of fun, you will be seen as more approachable and people will see your brand in a more personal way.

Use the videos. Even if they’re going to disappear right after being seen, you can still show a right amount to keep people interested in your brand. These videos don’t have to be that professional because of the time limit.

Show the personality of your brand. It is a social media app, so you should portray your brand in the way you want people to see it and demonstrate a more personal side of it. With the time limit of the app you’re able to show lots of videos and photos in a short time lapse. Use it to show what happens throughout your company’s processes.

Create a story. Brands use Snapchat to create a personal story that will be visible to users for 24 hours. Don’t be afraid to show a more personal side of your brand, this will attract people.

Live. Show your followers live moments of events happening around your brand.

Exclusive content. Deliver exclusive content only to your Snapchat followers. Thank them by sharing offers they wouldn’t find on other apps. Make them interested in sharing your Snapchat to other users or in other media. A good example of this could be a promo where they have to share one of your Snaps in other social media and tag you to win something.

Share your Snapcode. Share it on other social media so people can start following you.

Please share your opinion in the comments below.

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Rodrigo Garza

How Should Your Content Marketing Strategy Look This 2016

Here’s a short explanation on what content marketing is. This marketing strategy is focused on developing and sharing attractive, relevant, and steady content to engage and retain a certain audience. Content can be presented in various ways like videos, photos, news, e-mails, podcasts, blogs, etc. In raw terms, it’s a way to communicate with your potential customers without selling them anything. By doing this you’re showing them that you’re trustable enough and you’re giving them time to know and like your business before they start buying your brand.

To develop a new marketing strategy with good content marketing you should keep in mind the continuous growth of interactive content on the web. Companies are developing new ways to show brand content through a variety of strategies like that showcase videos and visuals. Some tools still in development and already attracting the attention of people are the Oculus Rift, VR tools, augmented reality, 360° videos, and other visual media content that you can already find on the web. These tools keep people engaged and entertained – they’re catching their attention.

Take note as well of the feature on social media to promote your publications. This tool will help your business reach out more people that may not be aware of what you offer – make sure to promote enough content that attracts people to your pages.

Always remember to have lots and lots of visuals to keep people engaged with your media. Make sure you create enough eye-catching content to publish and maintain people in touch with your brand. Videos are dominating people’s newsfeeds – you should incorporate some videos to your strategies, keeping them short and interesting (engaging the user from the beginning).

In this era in which our smart phones can build content almost similar to the one we used to see on T.V. using different apps and features, it is possible to create content that attracts the public and publish it instantly. You have to learn a lot about the apps of the moment or the features that are available for your phone so that way you can exploit it the best way possible.

As a final tip, make sure that all the content that you’re offering is responsive through mobiles. We expect to see an increment on the use of mobile devices to make online purchases and interact with web content. People are fascinated with their phones – make sure they can see what you offer on their smart phone!

Write a comment below if you believe there are other areas to focus on with your strategy….

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Rodrigo Garza

Create an Appealing Twitter Account for Your Business

Twitter is a microblogging platform that allows you to write “Tweets” that are 140 characters or less. People use twitter to find out what’s happening in the world in real time and to connect with people and companies globally. Around 42% of the total users on Twitter follow their favorite brands. It could be beneficial for your company to enter this potential market and have a significant outreach of possible new customers.

As a recommendation, your profile should have your logo as profile picture. Use the name of your brand as username and add the link to your webpage and other social media accounts in your description. Also, it is a good idea to create a hashtag with the name of your brand for people to communicate easily with you.

Use the proper format to correctly write your Tweets: 1) start off with the text; 2) then the link you want to display; 3) add the attribution with @ if needed; 4) incorporate the hashtags, and 5) insert an image to make it more appealing.

I will now explain what you can do to engage correctly with the community on Twitter:

Engage on relevant news

Comment on the trends, news, and other important events that could impact your brand. Join conversations that focus on things that matter to your business – this way people will see you engaging and, once they find your content relevant, they will start following you.

Retweeting

Another way to draw attention to your Twitter account is to retweet content that is interesting to your circle. Sharing this content will benefit your account and the one you’re retweeting from. Share information from important media content sources like Forbes, The Huffington Post, The New York Times, Buzzfeed or a source that is relevant with what you do.

Content

Share repeatedly to get to people. You need to create engaging content for people to share it with their followers. It could help if you write the word “retweet” in the tweet. Share pages, blog entries – give information that is relevant with the people you want to reach. Write tweets that generate conversations and hold the interest of your followers.

Teasing

To succeed doing this, you have to get people’s attention. You can create expectation in a series of tweets. Use this when launching a new product or a new feature – something new associated with your brand or an interesting promo. Create something worth following each tweet till the end.

Rewards

Provide your Twitter followers with exclusive content through promotions – something to reward them for keeping in line with your company through this platform.

Create a list

You can create lists of Twitter accounts and set them as private or public. You could create a private list to monitor your competition. You could also create a public list of Twitter accounts that you consider valuable in content and share it with your audience – this will draw more attention to your account.

Images and videos

These are important to engage with your followers. It is more reliable to be retweeted with an image or video in your tweet. Make sure to share images worth sharing or interesting videos that make people interested in what you publish.

Use the proper hashtags

Hashtags are the tools that you use on Twitter to reach a specific market. Use “Hashtagify” to research the most popular hashtags with the audience. Use “Rite tag” to rate the reach of your hashtags as you incorporate them. Get the MOST VISIBILITY for your tweets with these tools.

You can also use Twitter Analytics to evaluate your progress and discover influential people near your market. Make sure that you’re doing the right thing on your Twitter account to make the most of it.

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Rodrigo Garza

February 26, 2016

The Ultimate Guide to Exploit Your Instagram

We are talking about the fastest-growing app of the moment. This app has an estimated 400 million monthly active users (worldwide), and of those users the estimated number of users in the U.S. is around 77.6 million. In 2018, there will be approximately 106.2 million users in the U.S.. These numbers are estimated results taken from both Instagram’s own reports and other news reports.

It’s a good idea to start thinking about how to use this app to promote your brand or to reach your market in a very unique way. Instagram is a mobile-based social network used to share videos and photos, mainly. With it you can increase the customer engagement and loyalty by creating an image of your brand the way you want to be seen by social media users.

You need to take into consideration certain tips and strategies to be more reachable:

Hashtags. They show your post outside the circle of your followers. They let you reach more markets or customers that weren’t aware of your company. You could use popular hashtags, trends, or the ones that are searched by most people on the app. You could also go the other way and use very detailed hashtags to reach the persons that search for a specific thing – something more focused on what you offer. You need to experiment with hashtags – maybe using from 1 to 10 on each post (see what works best for you).

Keep your Theme. Build an identity with eye-catching content. You shouldn’t take random pictures and post them. Build a theme around your product or brand (the way you want to be seen by your followers) rather than just bombard people with pictures of promos or photos of your product. Create an image that could be associated with your product and slowly sell your brand in an attractive way.

Frequency. Create a content calendar to maintain an active presence. This will depend on how you want to reach your followers. The recommendable thing to do is to post daily to get to your followers and have the opportunity to reach new ones. If you think that posting more often (like twice a day) is going to increase your followers, just try it out. Experiment with different options and see what fits your brand until you find the perfect amount of daily posting.

Build a community. It is a social platform so use it as such. You need to engage with people, involve yourself around the interests of your company. This could be through hashtags, liking others person’s pictures, or commenting.

Profile perfection. Make sure that your profile is in touch with the theme you choose for the brand and also make your description and profile image attractive enough. You can show links to your other social media pages or to your website. Consider creating a specific hashtag associated with your brand that you can use in your pictures to make it your own and for people to associate it with your company.

Captions. You can write 2,200-character captions to engage your customers by microblogging within your posts, sharing a story or giving them a full description of the moment you’re sharing with them.

Tools. Use ICONOSQUARE, an app that allows you to access your account from your web browser and analyze the statistics of your posts on Instagram. Use SCHEDUGRAM to make a schedule of your posts in your account. INK361 offers a full service tool for viewing, scheduling and managing your posts. PIQORA will help you find things to attract an audience by showing them interesting posts.

Instagram adds. The app now allows you to advertise your business. You only need to create an ad on your Facebook account and pay for your business to reach more people through Instagram.

Tell us what do you think of these strategies or add another tip to use Instagram in the comments below.

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Rodrigo Garza

How to Professionally Address Bad Reviews Online

Did you get a bad review on Facebook, Yelp, Yahoo! Local, Citysearch, Angie’s list or Google places for business; or a tough comment on Twitter and upsetting comments on your blog?

Accepting positive comments is the easy and enjoyable part of using social media to advertise your brand, but a proper handle of the negative reviews can actually help you to build trust with your online customers.

Is not uncommon to read one bad review while checking out a service or a specific product online. It is part of the research and we normally seek the reviews to learn if the service we require has any turndowns. By checking these reviews we learn the opinions and descriptions other consumers’ experiences.

A “BrightLocal” study conducted last year shows that approximately 72% of consumers stated that they rely on online reviews same as personal recommendations, while 52% said that the favorable reviews made them more likely to buy the product/service described.

Negative reviews aren’t so bad, you should take them as a challenge to improve and to show to the public that your business can take one critique and turn it into something positive for your service or product – always recall that not everyone can be pleased all the time.

The golden rule here is to always respond to these reviews within a margin of 24 to 48 hours to show professionalism (but you need to have an idea of how to address these negative comments). So take it as a constructive feedback and check out some of the tips we offer you to address these situations the best way possible:

-Examine the review, don’t react quickly. When you find a bad review, the first thing you may want to do is defend yourself letting your emotions control you. It is clear that you want to show that you’re trying to give the best service all the time. In this situation, the best thing you can do is: first, just analyze the review; then, write a comment on the review sounding concerned; and finally, assure the client that you’re open to hear their opinion to improve your service. Show them that you’re glad to have that opportunity to make an improvement.

That way, you can establish conversation with the customer in a positive manner. Also, people searching reviews will read the conversation and will realize how you make amends on negative experiences.

At the end, after having decided to either refund their money or fix the issue by offering an extra service, you can now ask him/her nicely to re-write the review or make a positive comment about the solution to the problem.

–Resolve it out of the public eye. This is another step you could take by sending one personal message to the reviewer and search for a solution that doesn’t involve making a long conversation online to avoid drawing more attention to the review. Once the problem is resolved offline you could ask the customer to reconsider updating the review if they were satisfied with the way the situation was solved. This could be a different approach to the last point, in which you can avoid a possible misunderstanding online and discuss in a more personal way to solve the issue. Even if the customer doesn’t delete the comment, you can post the steps you followed to address this situation and let people know that you make an effort to maintain good relationships with your customers.

–Check for fake bad reviews. Yes, it could be possible that you’re dealing with the competitor or maybe an angry ex- employee. What you need to do first is to ensure that the review is fraudulent. Then, report this issue to the site the review was posted on – review sites like Yelp or Google Places for business have specific mechanisms to follow regarding fraudulent reviews). Once you report it and the site is sure that it’s indeed a fake review, it will disappear. The Federal Trade Commission has recently set precedent by punishing companies that write fraudulent comments; you could reach out to them as well.

–Let’s send the bad to the bottom. Be proactive! Another good thing that you could do to forget about bad comments is to encourage your loyal customers that are satisfied with the service you offer to write good reviews and comment about their experience with your service. This will send any bad review down the page, and you’ll have more positive comments for potential customers to read about your service on top (they would have to scroll down a bit to find the bad review). This weakens the bad reviews by showing that it was possibly an exception and not something that happens often.

What do you think? Comment below if you think there’s another solution to bad comments on review sites.

2013 The Year of Digital Marketing: The Internet Marketing Revolution

According to a comprehensive analysis by Morgan Stanley, 91% of people always keep their phone within 3 ft around 24 hours a day. Because communication systems have become ever more comprehensive and integrated, it makes sense that every day more and more people use their mobile devices to read news, listen to the radio, and watch the programs that they want to watch. The shift in the relative time people spend near “traditional media” is shrinking. It is predicted that in the year 2013 digital marketing would take close to 70 percent of all successful marketing campaigns, even those that have traditionally relied on printed media in the past.

The importance of digital marketing

2013 is a revolutionary year according to several online marketing sources. As technologies make it possible for more and more people to have an integrated online experience, all marketing should focus around conveniently delivering to the customer the products and services in such a way that it require a minimal effort for him/her. As search engines provide more comprehensive services, for instance Google developing the Knowledge Graph, more and more people are expected to focus on the online image of a business before actually committing to do a local purchase decision. People use the internet to read reviews, get advice, and develop a perception of an establishment to decide if he/she wants to conduct business with the company.

It is important for your company to develop the right kind of online content and marketing strategy if you wish your company to be successful in the year 2013 and beyond. Business that fail to provide a significantly comprehensive service by taking advantage of online resources and tools, will see a drastic drop in their new clients. Do not let your competitors put you out of business, focus on developing an integrated online image that will attract new customers and increase brand loyalty with your existing clients.